Archives for February 2016

February 29, 2016 By GOQii Leave a Comment

Stay Healthy and Save Money

Today’s Union Budget presented by Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley provides for new health protection scheme that will provide health cover up to Rs One lakh per family. And for senior citizens an additional top-up package up to Rs 30,000 will be provided. This is good but, how about staying healthy and reducing health costs once for all.

Lifestyle plays an important role in heart ailments but, perhaps many have not taken this to heart. Getting angioplasties and stents that cost thousands of rupees do not prolong life or prevent heart attacks in stable patients. Similarly, lowering blood sugar with drugs does not fully prevent the economic and human costs of diabetes (including heart attacks, strokes, amputations, impotence, kidney failure, and blindness), but lowering blood sugar with diet and lifestyle prevents all of these human and economic costs.

Bringing about lifestyle changes is easier said than done. Simple lifestyle changes like walking or cycling instead of driving, climbing stairs instead of taking an elevator, eating nutritious food or making dietary changes, exercising on a daily basis and incorporating some behavior modification technique can have a big impact on you and your pocket for the better. And rather than buy a pricey gym membership to get in shape, there are ways to work out on the cheap or choose a fitness tracker with a coach to guide you.

Her are 6 healthy habits that can keep you fit.

Portion Control and Mindful Eating: Watching how much you eat is one of the best ways to maintain your weight. Have smaller portions of food instead of filling your plate in one go and have 5 small meals a day that is healthy and nutritious. This will help you manage your weight, keep your cool, maintain your focus and avoid cravings.
Exercise Daily: The best way to start your day is with some good physical activity. We all know the importance of physical activity, but still only a less percentage of the population in the world follow the same. Exercise has been found to decrease your chances of depression, anxiety, and stress. It is also related to higher success in your career. If you don’t care about your body, every other aspect of your life will suffer. Take care of your body. It is the only place you live.
Have Enough Water: Staying well hydrated is one of our body’s basic needs. Water is needed to enable the body to keep eliminating the toxins generated, to produce digestive enzymes, maintain healthy skin, hair, organs and to help your body absorb essential vitamins, minerals and natural sugars. Water also regulates the body temperature, cooling one down by evaporating through the skin. Drinking at least 3 litres of water a day is a must.
Get A Healthy 7+ Hours of Sleep: Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being throughout your life. Getting enough quality sleep at the right time can help protect your mental and physical health, quality of life, and safety. Sleep is just as important as eating and drinking water. Despite this, millions of people do not sleep enough and experience insane problems as a result. The way you feel while you’re awake depends partly on how you have slept or what kind of sleep you have had. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health.
Think Positive and have a sense of Gratitude: Being positive and thinking positive builds a healthier immune system and boosts overall health. Body believes what you think so think positive. Gratitude is good for our bodies, our minds, and our relationships. Showing gratitude also keeps one happy. Gratitude also blocks toxic and negative emotions and
Avoid Stress: The human body is designed to experience stress and react to it. Here are few things you can do to avoid stress. Namely meditate, deep breathing, be alert, relax, laugh out loud, listen to music, and chase your hobbies.

So let’s stay healthy and save money and rather use that money for things we love to do.

February 29, 2016 By Ruta Satam 2 Comments

From Soul to Sole

Just as clothes are important to cover oneself, Shoes is also important to cover your feet from the hard ground. Lack of a shoe in your feet can cause a lot of wear and tear in the foot tendons, ligaments as well as bones. Additionally, hookworms, a leading cause of disease in developing countries, enter the body through the foot, usually when a person steps in infected dirt. The use of shoes is the best way to prevent infection by hookworms.

Sadly, today a lot of people and children alike from the background walk barefoot, not by choice, but because they cannot afford a pair of shoes or slippers. And then there is this affluent class or fairly privileged class of people who have several pairs of shoes and seldom know what to do with the extra pair that has got old and lying in the corner.

Understanding this disparity and the importance of footwear for one and all, two young lads from Mumbai Shreyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami started Green Sole, a social venture that collects discarded shoes, refurbishes them and makes comfortable footwear for the underprivileged.

The idea is to provide these shoes to the neediest through corporate, NGOs and schools. The seeds of this idea was sowed when Shreyans and Ramesh started running for fitness and ran hundreds of kilo meters every year participating in various Marathons. And through their runs they also lost three to four pairs of sport shoes each year.

They found that the soles were in good condition but, the shoe sides tore within months. The duo wondered if they could find some use for the intact soles of these quality sport shoes. Research led them to the idea of recycling and refurbishing them into trendy slippers. That brainwave eventually spawned an eco-friendly enterprise that reuses shoe soles and is appropriately named “Greensole”.

So far Greesole has distributed over 3000 footwear in Kondana village, Maharashtra and to homeless in Mumbai. There are several corporate entities who are joining this initiative of collecting old shoes and donating them to Greensole.

GOQii haspart of their Karma initiative has partnered with Greensole to provide its users a platform where they can donate their footwear or contribute their karma points towards those individuals who are deprived of a footwear. The idea is walk more to get healthy.

GOQii and Greensole will also be hosting on-ground workshops for GOQii users and provide all those interested an opportunity to lend their hands to make shoes for the under-privileged.

To know more about Greensole, please visit their website http://www.greensole.in/

Reference:

February 25, 2016 By Tejal Gupte 4 Comments

5 tips to eat safe outside your home

Eating outside your home comes as a big relief for most of us especially when we want to have something different from the regular routine “Ghar ka Khana”.

No matter how much we love home cooked food, there comes a point in time when we all crave for outside food even if it is not prepared in the best hygienic way. And well, it’s the first thing foodies like me look forward to do when on holidays or socializing.

Usually,nutritionists and dieticians always emphasize on healthy choices and mindful eating practices while eating out. But sadly, eating healthy i.e non-fatty, low calorie foods alone don’t help to stay healthy and fit. While we pay attention to the fat or sugar content and the processing method of the food while eating out, it’s also equally important to make sure what is served on our plate is safe enough to be consumed.

Failure to adhere to proper safety measures can cause nausea, vomiting, cramps, stomach upset, and in worst case can lead to a serious episode of food poisoning or food borne illness. Thus,a mere act of enjoyment and pleasing the taste buds ends up putting extra stress on our digestive and immune system.

So what’s the alternative? Is there something which can take care of both-the taste buds and our body’s system? The Answer is YES

Here are 5 simple tips which can help us lower the health risk and ensure that the food safety part is not completely ignored!

1) Look for eateries having open kitchen or at least which allows a view of the kitchen

Food safety is all about what goes beyond the scenes i,e inside the kitchen and depends on the person who is cooking as well as the one who is serving the food. Hence, opting for places or restaurant joints that have open kitchen or dining place which allows you to have a view of the kitchen area helps a lot. This will give you some idea of the cleanliness of the kitchen premise, the utensils/equipment and also whether the chef and other kitchen staff are taking care of personal hygiene or not.

2) Go for places/joints which are always crowded or have high visitor ratio

Apart from ensuring that such restaurant is popular and serves tasty food, it will also ensure safer food. This is because crowded places have high turnover of food, and hence chances of getting served stale food reduces (example-the left over gravies and sauces or foods such as cooked rice from previous day).

3) Avoid opting for dishes which are too exotic, off beat or off seasonal

This is largely to play safe as we never know which ingredients go inthe preparation of such foods. Also,it’salways best to avoid dishes which have offseasonal food ingredients say any fruit or vegetable, because storage method of such foods then is a big question?Which if not stored properly as per the protocol can impose a potential risk for food toxicity.

4) Prefer cooked foods over raw or cold foods

This is applicable while eatingin the roadside eateries or joints as they often use food items like chopped onion, peeled potatoes, chutneys etc; which are pre prepared and if not covered and stored properlycan be subjected to contamination from flies, pests etc and thus become a potential health hazard. Opting for cooked foods ensures that at least some microbes get destroyed due to heat.

For example:

#Go for grilled/toasted sandwich instead of regular sandwich

5)Beware of what you eat during buffet set ups

** Avoid having cut salads, cold pastas and fruits in buffet set ups like weddings or in hotels since they are likely to sit there for a long time before they actually go into our plate.We can have soups, grilled/sauteedveggies or steamed starters instead of salads in such situations to fill ourselves and save us from overindulgence.

** Besides this, make sure that all other foods kept at buffet table are maintained at proper temperatures; cold food should be kept cold, hot food should be kept hot when you serve them on your plate.

Remember, next time when you head out just follow these simple tips to make sure you enjoy your time away from the kitchen without thinking of the extra calories or worrying about food poisoning…think good nutrition!!

February 16, 2016 By Parwage Alam 4 Comments

16 major exercises to shed your excess weight -Part 2

In the first part of my blog, I mentioned 5 basic exercises that one can do to get fit and shed those extra kilos. In the second of part of the blog, I shall take you through with some major and slightly tough exercises, which will help corpulent people to get fitter. Start with some lighter exercise.

Warm Up Exercise:

Wrist rotation

Shoulder rotation

Shoulder adductions

Waist rotation

Ankle rotation

After your warm up, you can do the following exercise:

Wall Push-Ups: Stand at a distance of 4 feet from the wall. Face the wall and keep your hand outstretched and lean your body towards the wall with your palms well placed on the wall. Now start pushing your body forward and back until you are once again in a standing position.

Standing Cross Leg Stretch: Stand straight with legs crossed and outsides of feet together and bend to stretch.

Lying down one side’s upper and inner leg raises: Lie on one side with your head resting in a resting position on your hand just above your elbow. Keep your other arm in front of your central abdominal part with your palm facing down. Start lifting your top leg as high as it will go slowly. You can keep your free hand either on your hip or on the floor in front of you for some additional support. Keep looking straight in front of you instead of looking up at the leg. Gently lower your leg until it meets the other leg. Try to keep your spine straight and to avoid caving forward as you lift your leg.

Cat and Camel pose: Keep your hands and knees on your mat/floor. Your hands should be beneath your shoulders and your knees directly beneath your hips. Relax your head, and allow it to droop. Take a deep breath to start and while exhaling – gently pull your abdominal muscles backwards and towards your spine. Tuck your tailbone down and under. Gently contract your glutes, now your spine should look rounded upwards similar to a camel. After that gently inhale your breath and lower down your spine like a cat.

Child Pose: Kneel on your mat with your legs together and sit back on your heels and keep your palm on your thighs. Exhale and slowly rest your torso over your thighs so that your forehead touches the mat.

Yoga Pose -Bhujangasan: If you have carpal tunnel syndrome or other wrist injuries, or if you have recently had a surgery, or if you have back problems that are irritated while bending. Lie down on your mat facing towards the floor. Place your palms flat on your mat directly beneath your shoulders with your fingers facing forward. The tops of your feet should be flat on the floor.

Spread your fingers and press your palms against the floor. Rotate your shoulders back and down, away from your ears, keep your elbows close to your body and pointing behind you instead of out to the sides.

Lift into a low cobra pose. Keeping your hands, your hips, and the tops of your feet firmly planted on the floor, begin to lift your upper torso off the floor. Try to use mostly the muscles in your back to lift you. Tilt your chin upward and lift your chest toward the ceiling)

Pelvic Raises: Lie on the floor on your back with your arms behind your head. Bend your knees so that your feet are flat on the floor about hip-width apart. Contract your abdominals as you press your back down. Hold your back on the floor as you tilt your hips to raise your butt about an inch off the floor — 2 inches maximum. Stay in this position for a moment. Slowly bring your butt back to start. You may want to lift the lower back up. For the Pelvic Tilt to be effective, keep the lower back in neutral alignment for the duration of the exercise. Do not raise your head, neck, or shoulders. Remember not to arch your back.

Superman Raises: To begin, lie straight and face down on the floor or exercise mat. Your arms should be fully extended in front of you. This is the starting position. Simultaneously raise your arms, legs, and chest off of the floor and hold this contraction for 2 seconds. Tip: Squeeze your lower back to get the best results from this exercise. Remember to exhale during this movement. Note: When holding the contracted position, you should look like superman when he is flying. Slowly begin to lower your arms, legs and chest back down to the starting position while inhaling.

Crunches Half: Sitting upright on your butt on the floor, knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Sit up and hold your arms out in front of you while leaning back halfway (between sitting upright and lying on the floor) and then sit up completely, trying to touch your chest to your knees. Go down half way and then up again. This will work your lower back and upper abdominals.

Spot Marching: Walk in the same place at an easy pace, swinging your arms naturally.

Half Squats: Stand straight with feet hip-width apart. Keep your shoulder blades down & back. Brace the abdomen & squeeze the glutes. Squat by pushing the hips back and out before bending the knees. Stop when the thighs are halfway from being parallel to the floor. Return to starting position.

Wide Squats: Same process of Half Squats but with the wider leg position

One Floor Stairs: You just need to climb stairs one floor three times in a day.

Hamstring Curls: You need to stand straight, if you are not able to stand properly in the same place, you can use chair or anything to support. Bend your knee by folding your leg and try to touch your butt with your ankle. Try to raise as much as you can. Try to do the same posture with both legs alternatively.

Standing Alternate Side Leg Raises: Stand next to a chair, which you may hold onto as a support. Stand on one leg. This will be your starting position. Keeping your leg straight, raise it as far out to the side as possible, and swing it back down, allowing it to cross the opposite leg.

Back Leg Raises: Stand up tall holding onto the back of a sturdy object like a chair or resting your hands on a wall. Raise one leg, pressing it straight back behind you, and squeeze your glutes at the top of the motion. Pause and then return to the starting position.

Now you have all the information with the right instruction, so what are you waiting for? Let’s pledge for the healthy lifestyle and move one step ahead into your fitness.